Round-Off Error

This reminds me of a clever ad I saw in an engineering magazine a few years back that depicted construction workers who were erecting a bridge from opposite sides of a canyon.  Where the two halves met in the middle, they were misaligned by a few feet and the construction workers stood there scratching their heads.  Each side was blaming the other for the mess-up.

Dang Engineers!

I'm happy to support a good cause - and especially one that also involves fun and  creativity.  CANstruction is a charitable event where teams compete to make the most creative sculpture solely out of cans of food.  After the competition, the food is donated to a local charity to help feed the hungry.  On one occasion I served as a judge for a Las Vegas CANstruction event. Most recently, Wright Engineers' Phoenix office participated.  

Though this cartoon depicts the engineers executing an outrageous design, most often it seems - and it was this way in Phoenix - it's the architects who come up with the creative design; the engineers mostly provide cans and labor.

Dang Internet's Down

I know lots of people work from home and many of them feel they're more productive.  I wonder just how productive some people really are, though.  Whenever I've tried working at home I seemed to be constantly interrupted with things like "Honey, since you're here anyway, can you just [insert any number of domestic tasks here]..." or "Daddy, daddy, daddy, there's a bean stuck in my nose".

It's clear this guy's been working from home for a long time.

I Did It Just Like You Showed

This one was inspired by my partner Scott Jones who sent me a photo of a project where the contractor thought the delta cloud on the drawings meant to cut a cloud-shaped hole through the floor slab.

That's How It's Shown

A good set of construction documents can help make a project go smoothly. A confusing set (or a confused contractor) can cause some real trouble.

For more cartoons related to drawings and specs, click here.

Build - Then Design

Sort of like the "ready, fire! aim" approach to construction...

Many of the public projects these days are design-build, a good project delivery method if the construction and design teams partner well together. By having the design team and the construction team collaborate from the start, the final design can perform better, be easier to build, and cost less.

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No matter how heated the rush to "git 'er dun", I've never seen a build-then-design approach that didn't end in disappointment.

Might Not Be the Latest Drawings...

The inspiration for this came from a large project where the contractor created several headaches for himself and for us because he was building from an old set of drawings.

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When this cartoon was originally drawn,s I called the cartoon contractor Terry (coincidence?) instead of Bob.

Actual Size

I borrowed the idea for this one, but it's not too far from a real event that happend a few years back...

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I was called to a job site to look at a steel column that had been erected but just didn't look right to the contractor. When I arrived, the first thing I saw was what looked like a giant stiff steel flag hanging off of the side of a 30 foot tall column - like something you would see in 'Toon Town at Disneyland. It looked so ridiculous all I could do was laugh. It turned out that due to a CAD error, the dimensions for an 8 inch x 10 inch steel gusset plate were shown on the drawings as 8 feet x 10 feet. Amazingly, no one ever thought to question anything until the "flag" column was erected.

This Side Up

His next call will be to the structural engineer for a "fix".